Insects As Marketing Instruments

The world of marketing is one big competition of brands fighting to get their portion of consumer attention. Communication gurus like Seth Godin have elaborated the one very important rule of the game: make your message remarkable, otherwise it will pass like a ship in the night. In their struggle for a big idea, advertising agencies seek the borders of the marketing, coming up with ideas that are on one hand highly creative, but on the other hand forcing mankind to discuss where these borders should lie… which could turn your message into something remarkable. Using flies as marketing instruments is such a concept.

For the occasion of the Buchmesse, a book festival and trading show in Frankfurt, Stuttgart-based advertising agency Jung von Matt/Neckar introduced the so-called Eichborn Fliegenbanner. To gain absolute attention of unsuspecting visitors, light-weight banner advertisements were attached to 200 flies which were set loose on unsuspecting visitors. The banners, measuring just a few centimeters across, were attached using natural wax. After a short time the banner dropped off by itself.

Wired writes that the weight of the banners “…keeps the flies at a lower altitude and forces them to rest more often, which is a stroke of genius on the part of the marketing creatives: the flies end up at about eye level, and whenever a fly is forced to land and recover, the banner is clearly visible”. Oh, by the way, no flies were harmed. Animal marketing is born…

The Office for Subversive Architecture (OSA) is a network of eight architects based in London, Vienna, Köln, Berlin and Frankfurt. The work of OSA is a blend of art and architecture, exploring the way people use and interact with public spaces, especially in relation to urban regeneration. For example the Campinski project. As part of Campinski workshop, held by OSA at the Darmstadt University of Technology, students were asked to transform specific locations in an industrial harbor in Frankfurt into living spaces using only white igloo tents.

French street artist The Wa has spiced up the streets of Milan with a new, rather critical artwork — he recently installed a roller blind at a digital city billboard. The ‘Curtain’, as Urban Shit calls the work, enables passers-by to decide themselves whether or not they want to see the advertisement.

In my review of Made of… New Materials Sourcebook for Architecture and Design, I discussed several new material innovations in architecture and design that will shape the future of these fields. But building processes themselves also seem to be re-invented. The General Robotics, Automation, Sensing and Perception (GRASP) Laboratory at the University of Pennsylvania recently presented…

IBM has launched a clever series of billboards that double as urban furniture. Three different billboards that promote the company’s People for Smarter Cities program are designed to sit on, to take cover under when it rains or to pull your bags over instead of carrying them.